With constant adoption of state of art manufacturing processes, performances of semiconductor devices formed thereby, such as field-effect-transistors (FET) and dynamic random access memories (DRAM), have seen their steady improvement. Nevertheless, performances of these devices are still negatively affected by various factors, among which there are leakage current and static power dissipation. Not just that, unfortunately, both leakage current and static power dissipation have been increasing at a rate that is much faster than dynamic current and signal power dissipation which, unlike leakage current and static power dissipation, actually contribute to the performances improvement of semiconductor devices.
On the other hand, various research works and recently published papers are pointing toward a new direction suggesting that carbon nanotubes (CNT) may be able to offer a solution to the above concerns currently facing and impacting semiconductor device performance. For example, CNT has been demonstrated to possess a much lower electronic resistance, when being compared with some traditional semiconductor materials, which in turn means that CNT may be able to keep static heat or power dissipation low when being used in a semiconductor device to pass electric current. Despite the above suggested potential advantages, integrating CNT into currently existing semiconductor device manufacturing processes, such as a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) fabrication process flow is known to be rather challenging.